Blue Eyes and Freckles
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: A year after the events of 'Soft Place to Fall', Erik and Christine welcome their son.


**A/N: ****I wrote this back in August and posted it to Tumblr but forgot to post it here. In honour of my own birthday tomorrow, I'm posting it now.**

**Title comes from the song by Chris LeDoux**

* * *

Their son is born on 14 August 1885. Tiny and fair-haired, blue eyes. He has a whole face, but he has his father's ears.

Christine loves him instantly, has loved him since the moment she knew she was expecting him but never knew what form that love would take upon finding him in the world where she can no longer keep him safe. Now she knows it is a great consuming thing, in her bones and in her blood and in the swelling of her heart.

She kisses his forehead with tears in her eyes, and brings him to her breast.

* * *

It is not the done thing for fathers to attend child births. Besides, Christine was anxious enough, and would have been more anxious if Erik had been there, the weight of his worries and fears added to her own. She sent him away with Aman, promising him that everything would be all right, and telling him to stay off duty because she could not stand it if her husband was shot on the day their child is born.

He kissed her and promised her he would be careful, and left her in the company of Sorelli and Beth, and a midwife come highly recommended from several women in town who know all about labour.

* * *

He cannot settle for thinking of the sufferings of Christine, for thinking of their baby who will soon cease to be partially theoretical and will exist wholly in the world. He takes Ayesha out for a gallop, wind whipping his bare face, Aman keeping Darius just slightly behind, just enough to give him space.

He gets back to town and arrests four men for minor misdemeanours and Raoul settles it with each of them about a fine instead as Trev steers him to the Alhambra, and sits him at the piano with a bottle of whiskey.

The whiskey leaves him lightheaded, makes his chest and stomach burn and his hands feel oddly disconnected but the music flows from those disconnected hands, from fingers who do not truly feel as if they belong to him. Chopin. Liszt. Shubert. Mendelssohn.

Afterwards, he will wonder what it was he was playing as his son came into the world. It will have been, he will realise, the final dazzling arpeggio from the _Emperor_. But such wondering is in the future. Now his fingers rip through the piece in a silent packed saloon of people watching in awe because they never knew their marshal could play like that, never knew anyone could play like that.

He comes back to himself in a state of breathless ecstasy, fingers resting idly on the keys, applause ringing in his ears to drown out the world, drown out the beating of his own heart.

The tears slip from his eyes unbidden.

Trev pours him fresh whiskey, but his hands are trembling too much to take it. Aman squeezes his shoulder and dabs the tears from his face. Philippe squeezes through the crowd with the news, whispers it in his ear.

"It's a boy." There are tears, too, in his eyes and Erik struggles to take in the words. "And Christine is well."

Christine, well. A boy. A boy. A son.

He has a _son_.

He scrambles to his feet, finds Max and Trev dispersing the crowd though neither of them have worn badges in a year, and Philippe is hugging him and Aman is laughing and he's laughing too, laughing louder than anyone. A son, he has a son, he's a father.

"His face, what about his face?" Christine has told him a hundred times since she told him the news that it doesn't matter a whit if their baby looks like him, she will love it all the more for only having half a face, but so help him he would not inflict his face on anyone, certainly not a helpless little child of his blood.

Philippe's smile is very faint. "Sorelli says it's perfect."

* * *

He buys drinks for everyone, even the bartender. And then he quietly slips away, needing to be alone, needing to resolve this news deep in his own chest away from prying eyes and the caring smiles of his friends.

A son. He has a son.

Fresh tears prickle his eyes and he swallows hard against them. He will not cry, not yet. Not until he sees Christine for himself, and sees his little boy.

His little boy.

A little boy, who he will sit on his lap, and teach to play piano by setting those small hands on the backs of his, the way he been teaching Christine to play, the way his mother taught him to play once upon a time. A little boy who he will cradle close and rock to sleep and sing to. A little boy to play the violin for, to teach to ride on the back of Ayesha when he is big enough, to teach about gentleness, and kindness. A little boy who Christine will read to, will sing to. And maybe his boy (theirs, their boy, born of their love for each other, conceived on the night of his election) will have no taste for playing music but it will never matter, because he will still love their boy more than anything.

They have not discussed names. After everything that happened, everything that almost tore him from her side, discussing names felt too much like casting a curse upon their baby.

Their _son_.

He is before the door, now. Before the door, and it is like every time he has come home to her and different in a thousand ways. His heart is twisted tight in his chest for all the lightness within him. A baby. A baby of his blood.

A year and a half ago he did not have a wife, had not even the notion of ever fathering a child. But now he has both and they are both well, and love swells painfully within him, love for Christine greater than the whole world, love for their little son he has yet to meet.

His hand trembles as he opens the door.

Inside the midwife is still cleaning herself up, and she nods to him but he barely registers it, drifting past her to the room he shares with Christine, where she has been confined since early this morning, when she felt the first pains.

(He wonders, now, if she might have felt them sooner, and just not told him, to spare him worry.)

The door opens as he reaches out to it, and Beth is the other side, grinning at him. Beth knows now all about babies (little Susan is one of the dearest things he has ever seen).

"Congratulations, Erik." Her eyes are gentle but all he can muster is the faintest smile because suddenly his heart is throbbing hard, suddenly there is not enough room in his lungs, and his eyes slide past her, to Sorelli sitting by the bed, to Christine, Christine so beautiful and terribly pale, her face splotched red and her eyes bright and he wants to take her in his arms and kiss those tears from her eyes and promise her that it's all right, everything is all right, but he can't pull her into his arms or he'll hurt the bundle in _her _arms, the cream blankets wrapped tight around the most precious little boy in the world.

A cold irrational fear twists inside him. Sorelli told Philippe that the baby is perfect but what if there's something wrong? What if his boy does look like him or worse? Christine can hardly hate him for it with the way she's smiling so softly but she would grow to hate him someday for inflicting such a thing on their baby and their baby would grow up and never want anything to do with him, would cast him out of his life and he can't have that he doesn't want that how could he be so careless as to let something like this happen?

He is almost at her side, almost close enough to look down into the bundle swaddled in her arms, but he keeps his eyes fixed on hers, searching those blue depths for any sign, any hint that what he fears is justified, but she just keeps smiling, fresh tears caught in the delicate net of her lashes.

"Take off your mask." Her voice, her beautiful voice is hoarse after her ordeal and he cannot bring himself to argue with her, not with what she's gone through to bring their child into the world. His fingers are stiff as he fumbles the mask off, and sets it down on the bed, and her smile is soft. "Come meet your son."

_Your son_. Another throb of that blooming love, and he draws a deep breath, braces himself for what he might find, and looks down.

Looks down into a tiny face all wrinkled and red, and for one moment that panic flares beneath his heart until he remembers what Max said after Susan was born, how all babies look like that first. It is like an unnatural creature, but the knowledge that it is only temporary is a balm over the pain in his heart.

His eyes find tiny fingers, curled and peeking out from the blanket.

The skin of those fingers is soft beneath his touch.

* * *

They name him Christopher John, Christopher his insistence in honour of Christine herself, John her choice when he vetoed Erik. Christopher John Lamonte, and as Christine sleeps, he holds little Christopher close, and wonders that there is room inside of him for all of the love that he feels.


End file.
